


Sweet Dreams

by winter_angst



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Brainwashing, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Other, asset!steve, low calorie angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:06:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22156750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_angst/pseuds/winter_angst
Summary: Asleep, Steve never dreams.When he’s awake, however, it’s always a nightmare.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	Sweet Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Insomnia has struck so please, take an asset!steve fic. I hope you enjoy ^^

Steve never had dreams.

There were memories, good and bad and minute. Gory and tender, depending on who was in them. But since Bucky came back, he was dreaming about Bucky. They weren't memories because they hadn't happened.

One night he was standing on the front porch of a Victorian style house, the kind of house he and Bucky would have never had a chance in hell of living in back in the day. In the dreams, Bucky holds him with two flesh arms and rests his chin against the crook of Steve's neck. 

"Golly," he breathes and his breath smells like those root beer candies he loves. Two of 'em for a penny and since makes the money, Steve doesn't complain. "Real pretty huh?"

Steve knows it's a dream and that's strange. 

"Yeah," his voice is hollow not at all right for the scene. It seemed to shimmer around him but the sensation of Bucky remains. "Yeah it is."

The dream cycle concludes, it seemed. Everything hurts. His retinas are burning, his body too heavy and too weak to stand on its own slumps forward. Hands catch him and they burn horribly against his frozen skin. The mask is removed by more brisk, anonymous hands and suddenly he is dying. He can't breathe without the mask. Steve is struck on the back several times until his lungs are knocked back into working order. The first gasp is gargling, cryo-fluids still filling his lungs. He lowered to a slab. The sensation is too much, too overwhelming. Everything hurts. Like he's being ripped apart. 

"Basal temp?"

"Christ man, we just pulled him out." A hand on him. Steve remembers how to scream but it's weak and makes the man tut. "Winter isn't this noisy when he's thawing."

"More experience." 

Steve's mind is overstimulated. Too much sensation, too many voices, too much to keep track of. He wants to go back to the memories. He liked living it over and over again. Because in there, nothing hurt. Out here, everything hurt. 

Next would be the Chair and then to the cell to wait. He had to remember because once he started to forget it all would truly be lost. 

He is Steve. The last name didn't come to him but maybe it would later. Before the Chair because the Chair never helped me him remember. He is Steve. 

When his vision returns and he finishes emptying all the fluid in his stomach and lungs into a horrendous pile of bright blue icy sludge on the clinically clean lab floors, the guns come. The Other told him the names once but he had forgotten.

He is Steve. 

The Chair makes him think of colors. Of blue and white and red. He is too busy remembering to notice when he is being restrained. His mind, slow and lagging, sharpens up a face appears nearly nose to nose with him. 

"Welcome to the world, Cap." The Agent says snidely and Steve knows he is an enemy. He just can’t remember the cause.

He is a prisoner, then.

He spits the left over cryo-fluids on the hard cheekbone and the man struck him. Normally it wouldn't have hurt, Steve thinks, but his body is so oversensitive from the thaw he whimpers. The agent wipes away the spit and bares his teeth in a crimson smirk. 

"That wasn't so nice. I know comin' outta the freezer ain't fun but you got some work to do. So be a good boy and maybe we'll let Winter tag along huh?"

There's a mouthguard pushing against his rubbery lips and against teeth that feel too big. The agent strokes his jaw. "C'mon sweetheart, open up for your Commander."

Steve wants to spit in the Commander's face but... 'Sweetheart' means something. He opens his mouth and the guard is positioned the mouthguard in a near loving manner. 

"There," the Commander said softly. "That's a good Summer, right?"

His name is Ste — Summer.

He bobs his head slowly, enjoying the feel of the hard rubber as he rubs his bloated feeling tongue along the bite edges. It has happened before. 

"Oof I can see that brain of yours trying to work."

Summer? slowly raised his head up. His eyes are dulled in confusion and a look of permanent despair. His brain will never work properly again. Only when the handlers say the right words did it work as it should.

Steve wants to go back to cryo where the endless loops of past thoughts and emotions and tastes and experiences run like a film behind frozen eyelids. 

For Rumlow there is nothing sweeter than having Captain America strapped in for another wipe. The serum is different than the Winter Soldier's, it repaired tissue quickly so they did the wipes more often. Rumlow liked it best this way. The vague realizations that he was losing, helpless to the memories bleached from mind. He watches those blue eyes drift around the room, at the faceless guards and white coats and then back to him, dazed and lost. 

"It'll be over soon," Brock smiled, simpering, because he knows that Steve would believe it. "Real soon, Cap. Gotta stay strong right?"

A half-hearted attempt at a nod. A confirmation of bravery toward a cause he didn't know. A shiver of anticipation runs down Rumlow's spine as he heard the labcoat at the computer ask for verification to initiate the wipe. 

"Yeah," Brock steps back and grins. "Yeah, he's ready."

The pieces came down, closing around his head. The humming is grating for them with human ears but he can’t imagine what it was like with their hypersensitive hearing. Rogers begins to shift, eyes rolling around like he was looking for something. Someone? Barnes, possibly. It is funny that he remembers the Soldier; it has been two years since they risked the two of them an op together. 

The mission had been a success but it had been in Russia and Cap seemed to default toward saving Barnes over the operation. A few times Brock had the satisfaction of the Ghost, who had no idea who the Hell Steve was, slamming him against the wall with a metal hand on his throat telling him to pay attention. 

Steve didn't even know why he felt the need to protect Barnes half the time and that was a riot. 

The screaming begins and that part was never fun, just a headache for Brock. 

In the Chair, Steve is certain he is dying. Every bit of feedback his body has begun to process is stripped down varying shades of red. He can smell the bitter, sharp electricity; he can feel the pain stabbing into every bit of his body. He is being torn apart, ripped away... Words cannot properly convey the sensation, the loss of self. The pain became the only constant until that too seems like nothing because it is all he knows. 

Slowly, his senses come back. His body slumps as the concrete floor tilts sickening. A man kneels in front of him, smile small but coy. 

"Better?"

Better than...? His tongue is heavy, swollen. There is something foreign clenched between his teeth but he didn't have the muscle control to release it. A second man stands just beyond the first one and clears his throat in an expectant way. The first man grins, toothy, and it makes part of him want to retreat. The man speaks, words strong and unhesitating. Words that he does not hear but instead feels. 

Feeling rushes back to his limbs and it isn’t right. 

It feels wrong but it also feels... It wasn’t s he only thing that was known. "Soldier?" The first man steps forward. 

His SO, a voice that is not his own offers. Detached and cold and wrong but the only known thing. 

"Ready to comply." He stands, taller than everyone else. It meant nothing; his body a physical tool. For Hydra. 

For the cause; a new world, he was part of it. Soldier, listen. 

"Good," the Commander says, "Get him cleaned up. We'll store 'em together. For old times sake."

Time goes by in hitches and bursts. One moment the Summer Soldier is being pelted with cold water, hands evasive and hardly tolerable touching him places he doesn't like but no, he doesn't like or dislike anything because he doesn't have — shouldn’t have — a preference.

Then, his hands are together, bound in cuffs that are unbreakable and he doesn't know how he knows that because it hasn't before. But maybe it has and he doesn't remember. He forgets a lot. 

"Try not to kill each other," the Commander says as he opened the door. The space is not large, hardly big enough for the two cots. There is a man sitting on the cot, eyes trained on them.

The sight of him is distressing and he twitches against the bindings for a moment. The Commander grips the back of his neck. "Enough." 

He freezes. He is freed and they leave. 

"Winter," the man says, voice soft. He touches his chest. Then he points toward the Summer Soldier and says, "Summer."

The man has named him; that is good. He has made an ally. Soldiers need comrades. Winter will be Summer's. Summer tries to distinguish why this man is familiar, why they are together and not in use. His eyes tilt upward. The walls, the floors all concrete. There is a grate in the top to regulate air flow. The cot across from his squeals as Winter leans closer to him.

An alarm sounds in Summer's head and his hands ball into fists. He was useless if damaged and this Soldier was a threat. Winter paused, reading his rigid body language and his eyes hardened. Summer surmises Winter has been looking at him closely; Winter sits back and doesn't look at him again for a long time.

Summer ponders the situation, the task, his mind churning over the limited stimulation granted. It wasn't...didn't make sense. He stands up and Winter's metal arm whirls. 

"We're awaiting orders," Summer says to himself as the realization strikes him. It feels familiar, the waiting. "From...the Commander."

Winter does not contribute but his gray eyes follow Summer. 

• • • •

Steve has nightmares, not dreams.

When he is awake, he is stable. He doesn't think about Hydra about being Summer, about the personality that was born in captivity. At night he thinks of nothing else. Bucky is there, arms around him, like a dream. His breathes are ragged and uneven, his skin tacky with sweat. 

"'S okay," Bucky mumbles and Steve hates himself for waking him. He had been with Hydra for three years which is nothing compared to Bucky's time. "It's alright Steve. I got you."

Steve not Summer. 

"So much for me taking care of myself," Steve says through the shuddering. It's late and they should try and sleep before they face the team with fake smiles and pretending they can’t recollect their time as Summer and Winter. "Does it get better?"

Bucky's face twists into a smile too painful to ignore. "Can't tell you that yet. But we'll deal with it together; 'til the end of the line, right?"

Steve feels the tears fall and Bucky's lips brush them away. "Of course, Buck." He murmurs. "Of course."


End file.
